Drag Me To Hell marks Sam Raimi’s return to the world of Horror from the sunny shores of Summer Blockbuster island. As with his three Evil Dead films, Drag Me To Hell straddles the gap between Horror and Comedy by combining elements of slapstick knockabout humour with the major keys, creeping camera-work and build and release mechanics of the Horror genre. However, for a film that seeks to trade so heavily upon its big visual set-pieces, it is not only poorly written but grossly over-written too.
Category / American Film
REVIEW : Lakeview Terrace (2008)
VideoVista also has my review of Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace. As I explain in the review, the impression I was left with after watching this film was that I had just spent an hour and a half arguing with an idiot. This is an impression I get whenever I watch a film by Neil LaBute.
Speaking of misfiring thrillers, I also reviewed Antonio Bido’s spectacularly patchy Watch Me When I Kill (1977). Amusingly, the DVD includes a piece to camera by Bido himself in which he explains how few thrillers he has actually seen and how much he disliked the genre. I’m reminded of the fact that, when he died, Stanley Kubrick had an entire library filled with the books he used while researching the films he worked on. Hmm.
The Trap, The Wire and The Loop : Individualism as a Political Force
Over the past week, I have been thinking about two particular works. The first, is Armando Iannucci’s spectacular In The Loop (2009) and the most recent of Adam Curtis’ documentary series The Trap (2007). Both works examine the social and political fall-out from Tony Blair and New Labour’s decade or so in power. Both present us with a post-modern political landscape in which facts and values are not only seen as open to manipulation by people in power, but where facts and values are seen solely as expressions of personal preference. Far from being a hyperbolic and polemical accusation or a satirical construct, this understanding of human cognition is shared by people on the left and the right and has come to dominate the political and conceptual landscape to the extent that it is almost impossible to think of an alternative to it. However, some films, such as those of Paolo Sorrentino present a radically different vision of human cognition. One in which rational self-interest serves as a mask for much deeper and darker passions.
Rosemary’s Baby : Whimper Against the Machine
Polanski week has seen me write at length about the cinematic technique, intellectual pedigree and philosophical themes of Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy but for Rosemary’s Baby (1968) I would like to take a different approach. Arguably one of Polanski’s best known films, Rosemary’s Baby is wonderfully acted, perfectly paced and so tightly written and shot that not a single frame feels out of place or fails to pull its weight. From the famously ‘Doris Day’ soap operatic opening scenes to the macabre ending, it is close to being a flawless work of cinematic genius. However, where The Tenant (1976) and Repulsion (1965) are quite clearly about the descent into madness via sexual repression, Rosemary’s Baby deals in the more fantastical currency of witches, Satanism and the birth of the anti-Christ. The use of such fantastical imagery invites us to wonder what the film is really about. Rosemary is clearly not mad, nor is she sexually frustrated.
Rosemary’s Baby is a snapshot of social power dynamics in 1970s New York. It is a film not only about the treatment of women at the hands of a powerful Patriarchy, it is also an account of price exacted from the young by the elderly in return for the transferal of power to members of a new generation. Despite being a film about unearthly creatures, Rosemary’s Baby is ultimately a profoundly temporal film about man’s inhumanity to man (and especially woman).
Polanski Week
While I try to move outside of my comfort zone in the films I choose to watch, sometimes I find myself in a place where only a certain kind of film will satisfy me. At the moment, that type of film is the psychological thriller. One of the masters of this particular genre is the Polish-French director Roman Polanski. Holocaust survivor, husband to Sharon Tate (who was murdered by Charles Manson and his ‘Family’) and fugitive from justice, Polanski has made many powerful and disturbing films though perhaps none as disturbing as his Apartment Trilogy.
- Repulsion (1965)
- Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
- The Tenant (1976)
In order to pay appropriate hommage to my current obsession, I have decided to turn Ruthless Culture over to the study of Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy for a period not exceeding one week.
REVIEW : The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)
Videovista have just put up my review of William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster.
A couple of notes on this review. Firstly, Masters of Cinema always include a little booklet with their DVDs containing essays. These serve as DVD extras by whetting your thematic apetite and filling you in on historical context. If I don’t mention these booklets in the reviews it is because they do not systematically get sent out with the review copies. This is something I rather regret as I think that the extras (even in dead tree form) are part of the pleasure of discovering these old films. Secondly, I recently crossed swords on a forum with an employee of Eureka or Masters of Cinema and he suggested I put on the subtitles if I couldn’t hear the words. I took this as a suggestion that I needed to clean out my ears but evidently watching films with the subtitles on is a ‘thing to do’ with DVD releases of old films. So apologies to said employee if he reads this.
Ruthless Culture 